Chapel of the Annunciation

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

A two-storey building comprising a large upper storey of concrete construction clad in decoratively treated pre-cast concrete blocks, oversailing a ground storey of rubble sandstone cross-wall construction; of square plan, set at 45 degrees to the line of the front façade of the convent and attached by one corner to the convent at its former main entrance. Main elevation, formed by the salient angle between the north-east and south-east walls, faces east toward the main street; main entrance, located in a ground floor recess, faces north.
Roof appears to be flat, with a shallow pyramidal rooflight or lantern to the eastern end of the east-west access, positioned over the altar in the first floor chapel.
Exterior walls of the first floor chapel are of pre-cast patterned concrete blocks decorated with a series of repetitive raised cross motifs, except for smooth borders to the top of the walls and along the salient angle facing to the east. The walls to the north-east and south-east are blind, but mounted with projecting beaten enamelled metal sculptures, representing the four evangelists on the south-east wall and the ‘Father’, ‘Son’, and ‘Holy Spirit’ on the north-east wall. The walls to the north-west and the south-west each contain a tall and wide rectangular stained glass aluminium-framed window to the eastern end, and a tall but narrow plain glass aluminium-framed window to the western end where the first floor chapel joins the earlier convent; above and below the windows are panels of green slate.
Exterior walls of the ground floor are of squared sandstone random rubble, running north-south as short cross-walls in chevron formation, with recessed window panels facing north-south between them, and a rectangular bay window with projecting vertical mullion-like fins attached, facing east, all recessed below the oversailing upper storey.

SETTING: The chapel is located on the east side of the main convent block entirely within the grounds of the convent whose
setting is described in detail under HB09/14/024A.

Historical information

Designed in 1963 by Laurence McConville of Rooney & McConville, architects of Belfast, and completed in 1965; opened 26 March 1965. It was added to a convent of 1891 (HB 09/14/024A) to provide nine new cells for nuns on the ground floor and a chapel for thirty on the first floor. The beaten metal sculptures on the exterior, and the similar crucifix and tabernacle in the interior were designed and made by Patrick McElroy; stained glass windows by Patrick Pye; sculpted stone altar by Michael Biggs; and enamelled copper stations of the cross by Brother Benedict Tutty.

This was one of the most architecturally radical churches in Ireland in its time being one of the first that was entirely modern in layout and design; it was also one of the first demonstrations of a renewed interest in the patronage of Irish artists by the church in Ireland and the successful integration of their work into a unified expression both inside and outside.
Sometime prior to 1993 the bottom two courses of precast panels on the first floor were replaced in the original style.
The building has been vacant since 2001.

The grounds to the south side open onto the grounds of Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church built in 1855-60 to the designs of J.J. McCarthy.

References – Primary Sources
1. OS Map 1857, Co Tyrone 29 (shows a terrace of buildings along the street front to the east of the plot, with the site of the convent complex vacant).
2. OS Map 1935, Co Tyrone 29 (shows the convent and school blocks, with an open area to the east).
3. Datestone of 1891 on exterior of the National School.

Secondary Sources
1. Architects’ Journal, 7 September 1966, p 634.
2. R.J. McKinstry, ‘Contemporary Architecture’, in M. Longley, ed, Causeway: The Arts in Ulster (Belfast, 1971), p 32.
3. UAHS, Dungannon and Cookstown (Belfast, 1971), pp 22 and 33 (Item 84).
4. D. Evans, An Introduction to Modern Ulster Architecture (Belfast, 1977), pp 55-56.
5. A.J. Rowan, The Buildings of Ireland: North West Ulster (Harmondsworth, 1979), p 217.
6. R. Hurley and W. Cantwell, Contemporary Irish Church Architecture (Dublin, 1985), pp 55-57.
7. P. Larmour, ‘Twentieth-Century Church Architecture in Ireland’ in A. Becker, J. Olley, and W. Wang, eds, 20th-Century Architecture: Ireland (Munich and New York, 1997), p 62.
8. R. Hurley and P. Larmour, eds, Sacred Places: The Story of Christian Architecture in Ireland (RIAI and RSUA, Dublin and Belfast, 2000), p 30.
9. S. Walker, Historic Ulster Churches (Belfast, 2000), p 114.

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

A. Style
B. Proportion
C. Ornamentation
F. Structural System
G. Innovatory Qualities
J. Setting
K. Group value

Criteria for listing: historic interest

V. Authorship
X. Local Interest
Z. Rarity
W. Northern Ireland/International Interest
Y. Social, Cultural or Economic Importance

Evaluation

This is a post-2nd World War building in a thoroughly modern style, with appropriate contemporary ornamental applied exterior artwork, which retains all its original exterior features and forms part of an interesting and unusual group along with the late Victorian convent to which it is attached and the mid-Victorian Gothic Revivalist church standing alongside it. The chapel stands as one of the most architecturally radical churches in Ireland in its time, being one of the first that was entirely modern in layout and design, as well as very successfully integrating the work of contemporary Irish ecclesiastical artists, while the juxtaposition of its modernity with the conventionality of treatment of the convent to which it is attached, can be seen as having transcended normal considerations of architectural appropriateness or inappropriateness of style to become a particularly striking illustration of an historic architectural development.